It's a perverse analogy, but Gibbard could be cajoling Death Cab's audience with those words, and with the quartet's seductive sprawl of a sixth studio album. "Narrow Stairs," out next Tuesday, is more than an artistic gesture. It's a statement of purpose from a onetime college-town indie band that is well on its way to becoming a real rarity in pop: an intrepid major-label rock group that demands autonomy and has the creative vision to back it up.
On 2005's "Plans," Death Cab, which headlines the WFNX Best Music Poll concert at Bank of America Pavilion tomorrow, took some sly risks that produced unexpected moments of real drama - closing a lush tune with a blunt piano plink or signaling the end of summer with a stiff marching drum.
This time out the musical gambles are bolder and the outcome proportionally more dramatic. And the sweeping twists and turns don't feel calculated; on the contrary. Where "Plans" was an elaborately constructed production, "Narrow Stairs" - the band's sophomore effort for Atlantic Records - feels intuitive and visceral.
Gibbard has always been a dark, literate songwriter. Here he details crushed hopes and dead-end relationships with painterly precision, and guitarist Chris Walla - once again seated in the producer's chair - presides over a gorgeously rattled phalanx of churning strings, thrashing rhythms, swirling keys, and winsome melodies.
The most adventurous songs court a collision between texture and structure, tension and beauty, that evokes Radiohead. With no conventional pattern to settle into, "Bixby Canyon Bridge" is a one-way ticket to oblivion; the song erupts and vanishes like the protagonist's dashed dreams. "Pity and Fear," a sinuous slice of tabla-fueled paranoia, is a shape-shifting monster that grows fuzzed-up tentacles and sprouts quivering beats as the measures pile up.
